Therapy in a Nutshell
Daily Habits to Reduce Stress and Anxiety
Discover daily habits to reduce stress and anxiety by managing your nervous system and building resilience in this Therapy in a Nutshell video.
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In this video, I teach 10 essential daily habits to manage stress and anxiety. But in this video, I’m also going to explain a way of thinking about stress that can transform it from just something bad that happens to you into something that you can channel and use to be more productive.
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Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC, and the information provided by Emma McAdam are solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and are not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. Although Emma McAdam is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the views expressed on this site or any related content should not be taken for medical or psychiatric advice. Always consult your physician before making any decisions related to your physical or mental health.
About Me:
I’m Emma McAdam. I’m a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and I have worked in various settings of change and growth since 2004. My experience includes juvenile corrections, adventure therapy programs, wilderness therapy programs, an eating disorder treatment center, a residential treatment center, and I currently work in an outpatient therapy clinic.
In therapy I use a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Systems Theory, positive psychology, and a bio-psycho-social approach to treating mental illness and other challenges we all face in life. The ideas from my videos are frequently adapted from multiple sources. Many of them come from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, especially the work of Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, and Russ Harris. The sections on stress and the mind-body connection derive from the work of Stephen Porges (the Polyvagal theory), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) Francine Shapiro (EMDR), and Bessel Van Der Kolk. I also rely heavily on the work of the Arbinger institute for my overall understanding of our ability to choose our life's direction.
And deeper than all of that, the Gospel of Jesus Christ orients my personal worldview and sense of security, peace, hope, and love https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe
If you are in crisis, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or your local emergency services.
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i don't know about you but for me 2020
has been a bit of a stressful year so i thought i'd share with you some of the things
that i do every day to manage stress and anxiety but in this video i'm also going to explain a way
of thinking about stress that can transform stress from something that is you know just something bad
that happens to you into something that you can channel to be more productive and also help you
feel calmer so in this video you're going to learn 10 daily habits to reduce stress and anxiety and
don't worry i'm not going to tell you to meditate this video is sponsored by better help where
you can get a professional licensed counselor who can personally coach you through anxiety and
stress for around 65 dollars a week so check out the link in the description for 10 off your
first month so i've been reading the little house on the prairie books to my daughter and in
book three we're reading a story about almanzo and his farming family in the 1800s
and they survived off of what they grew and in one of the stories right before the fourth
of july they've got their corn starting to sprout in this in the fields and the weather starts
to get weird so it seems like it's going to freeze so before they go to bed the parents
start to worry a little bit about the crops and they they don't go to sleep they stay up and
they watch the temperature and sure enough it does start to freeze so they get all the kids out of
bed in the middle of the night and the only way to save the corn is to pour water on each of these
tiny little stocks before the sun comes up and if they don't their corn is going to freeze and
they'll have no harvest that year so every member of the family anxiously runs through the night
hand watering each little corn sprout in their acres and acres of fields and by the time the sun
rose they'd managed to save most of their crop they were exhausted but they were also content
and after they did the rest of their morning chores they were able to sit back and relax
and appreciate the hard work that they've done so the stress response is your body's activating
response when you sense a threat in almanzo's case this was their livelihood about to be destroyed
your body turns on this sympathetic response it sends out some adrenaline to spur you into action
it heightens your breathing and your heart rate to prep you for performance and almanzo and his
family they use their stress response to spur them on the worry helps them to be vigilant to not
sleep to take this you know impressive physical action and this stress response potentially saved
them from complete crop failure so anxiety isn't just something bad that happens to you it serves a
function but our modern language confuses anxiety with anxiety disorder and it's given this
negative connotation to the word anxiety but anxiety isn't out to get you it's your body
and mind's performance mode so the stress or the anxiety response can help you have more energy
and get more done and then it'll naturally resolve if you know how to channel it so i'm going
to teach you some daily habits you can use to naturally resolve your anxiety when you think of
anxiety as a motivating energy to resolve problems anxiety can become a powerful tool instead of just
something bad that happens to you that you want to avoid and even if you do have an anxiety disorder
these tools will help you reduce your stress levels and get healthier so let's talk about a
modern problem that we all have one of the reasons that so many people struggle with stress and
anxiety is that we face a few modern problems that make it a lot harder for us to deal with stress
than almanzo and his family back in the 1800s because our anciently evolved brain isn't so good
at dealing with modern stressors we all need to take an intentional approach to managing anxiety
so the first problem that many of us face is that so many of our modern stressors are connected
to problems that we can't solve physically so in almanzo's case when they were worried
they got that jolt of adrenaline and cortisol and they were able to use that physical energy to
solve a physical problem they didn't feel stressed afterwards because they burned off the adrenaline
and cortisol when they were running around solving the problem so for many of us our modern stressors
are things like deadlines and assignments traffic noise and our crops are sitting
at a computer instead of planning corn so if i'm stressed about a problem at work i may
not sleep and i might even solve that problem but the adrenaline and the cortisol stay in my
system until i physically burn them off so this is where exercise becomes clutch daily exercise
is an essential part of reducing pent-up anxiety five minutes of exercise has been shown
to reduce cortisol and adrenaline levels exercise can decrease overall levels of
tension it can elevate your mood it can improve your sleep and it can improve your
self-esteem so aerobic exercise you know where you're breathing really hard that tends to be
the most effective type of exercise at reducing stress but really any kind of movement is helpful
so going for a walk or a bike ride or even just doing like wall sits or stretching for a minute
in your office those can all be helpful so the first thing i'm going to encourage you to do is
just find a way to add some movement to your day now let's talk about your morning routine how
you start your day is going to set the tone for your entire day so if you're like many people the
first thing you do makes your anxiety worse so um this is what it looks like for a lot of
people you're tired because you went to bed a little bit late and the first thing you do
is start scrolling through your phone you look at social media or the news and then you drink
some caffeine now caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world it crosses
the blood-brain barrier in seconds and it makes you feel more alert by reducing adenosine but
adenosine is a relaxation chemical in your brain caffeine can also increase adrenaline and it can
make you feel more irritable more anxious and more agitated now you can develop a tolerance
to the alerting effects of caffeine meaning you're going to need more coffee the next time to
feel alert but you don't develop a tolerance to the anxiety effects of caffeine so caffeine
use can impact your sleep and your anxiety for up to 48 hours and caffeine has been shown
to contribute to anxiety and depressive disorders so if you're serious about decreasing your anxiety
try getting caffeine out of your system for at least three days and see how how that impacts
you i personally don't use caffeine because of the impact it has on on my anxiety levels
if you feel tired one thing you could try is getting more sleep sleep helps your brain
function better which makes it so you can better solve problems and resolve situations
that bring you anxiety so if the idea of making these changes seems overwhelming um i'm
just going to encourage you to start slowly just make one little change every month there there is
no quick and easy fix for anxiety like if you're looking for some magical cure you'll have to
check some other channel because that's not what i'm selling but you can drastically reduce your
anxiety by making small and sustainable changes okay so now let's talk about your
media consumption so our ancient evolved brain is much better adapted to the world
of little house on the prairie than it is to our modern media almanzo and lara may have gotten a
newspaper once a week or heard the news from town occasionally but that news was often about
local events the news was brief and infrequent and actionable so stress about the news could
be resolved by taking action so for example if a couple in town got married they could make
them a present or if a barn burned down in town they could go help their neighbors build a new
one this is the opposite of what we have today so these 24 7 streams of disaster around the
world these trigger our stress response as if as if we're in physical danger but they they
don't give us any place to act to create safety so if you wake up in the morning and you just
start scrolling through your feeds or you start watching the news you're basically giving other
people the power over your adrenaline glands i do not recommend starting the day off with the
news instead sit back for a second and think what do you want the tone of your day to be for me i
want it to be upbeat calm self-assured peaceful and powerful now what kind of media does that for
you for me it's prayer and scripture study first thing in the morning for you it may be meditation
journaling uplifting music but the important thing is that the first thing you do is something you
choose so i don't i don't just bury my head in the sand when it comes to the news i choose to to
check a couple of of straightforward news stations um once or twice a day but i don't do it first
thing in the morning i also i also choose to focus more of my time on areas that i can take action
on instead of on areas that are out of my control the stress response is supposed to help you
it's about performance and taking action but it's also supposed to be the short-term reaction
so it's healthy for bursts of speed but it becomes unhealthy when it's chronic and when that stress
remains unresolved so if you take the little house of the prairie story they worried they didn't
sleep they took action they did what they could to save the corn and some plants lived and some
plants died but then they relaxed our body has a natural balancing reaction to the stress response
this is called the parasympathetic response but most of us don't know how to turn it on so you can
choose to turn on this parasympathetic response through grounding exercises or breathing exercises
which i'm going to talk about later but the most natural way to resolve the stress response is
to simply complete a task so if you feel worried about an assignment and then you turn it in ah you
feel that stress go away and this is one of the reasons why coping skills can only go so far in
helping anxiety because anxiety is best resolved by doing one of two things either taking
action to resolve the problem or threat or whatever it is or practicing active acceptance
so letting go of things that you can't change but in our virtual world even when we do complete
a task or we resolve a problem it can be hard to see the results so my next tip is that you find
a way to acknowledge when you can set down a task you you make it concrete so for me i really like
checklists um i'll even like if i complete a task and it wasn't on my checklist i'll write it on
my checklist and then i'll check it off so that i can um feel that sense of completion now there
are lots of ways to do this but find some way to mark off or to acknowledge when you've completed
a task mike boyd just made a really interesting machine that does this or simone yertz gertz i
wish i know how to say her name right um they also have some interesting ways to kind of mark off
when they've completed something so i encourage you to find some way to give yourself some
physical tangible way to celebrate your success now this can be really hard to do with
long-running stress or long-term projects but you can learn skills and practice them to
turn off the stress one skill that i learned from michael barrett who was the director of the center
for change this is an eating disorder treatment program is to every day when i leave work to make
a conscious practice of setting that work aside so for me i just say a little prayer about my
clients i say lord i've done the best i can i'm leaving them in your hands now there is a
lot of different ways to do this but the basic idea is choosing when to carry something mentally
heavy and when to set it down so this could be as simple as turning off notifications on your phone
or setting boundaries at work about when they can and when they can't contact you when your job
is mostly mental or mostly emotional or virtual i also really find it helpful to choose something
manual to complete it can be really nice and relieving to see physical progress on a task so
this could look like cleaning something mowing the lawn fixing something physical there's just
something about physical tasks and completion that seem to click that like ah switch in the
brain it triggers that parasympathetic response in our brain that says okay you're all right you're
safe now and it turns off that stress response now managing anxiety is about being intentional
and in control instead of reactionary so i have this picture in my head of me as a little kid
coming home from playing at a friend's house um you know it's evening it's starting to get dark
and i i grew up in a super safe town but when it started to get dark and i was walking home um you
know how it feels like there's like that tingle in the back of your neck and maybe you wonder
if there's something behind you in the dark um now of course in every single situation there
was nothing back there but if you start running then you get more scared and you get you
get more and more scared the faster you run and then you get through the door and you slam the
door whatever you look out the window and there was nothing behind you now that is how i visualize
daily low level stress and anxiety it's like you start to feel that tingle in the back of your neck
and your impulse is to run so if you're at work and you start to feel a little bit stressed you
try to work harder you try to work faster and you try to get more things done but that doesn't
make you more effective i have the tendency to try to fill every waking moment with busyness
you know checking your email or just keeping busy all the time by always staring at your phone so
just like me as a little kid we perpetuate anxiety when we run from it when we run from ghosts
so instead of running like stop slow down turn around and look around you and
you'll see that there's nothing there so what does this look like in my day-to-day
routine this looks like taking the time to breathe taking the time to slow down to do something
calming or to do something grounding this is this is how you regulate your nervous
system throughout the day you may feel like you're getting more done by just going faster but you'll
be a lot more effective and less stressed out if you take a minute every hour or so to
just clarify and to breathe and to slow down our brain is not very good at multitasking that
can trigger that sympathetic that fight flight freeze response so another way to help strengthen
your parasympathetic response is to monetise so our brain gets super overwhelmed by multitasking
basically interprets too much stimulation as being unresolved threats so close those tabs do
one thing at a time and then just you know one of the things that i do throughout the day that
helps me calm down is to just notice where you are so just notice right now that you are watching
this video now i promised that i wouldn't tell you to meditate but mindfulness is different it's
just slowing down and noticing the present moment noticing that you are doing what you are doing and
then you can move on and get back to you know your work or whatever so another essential skill to
manage anxiety for your daily routine is to do what i call big picture small picture so stress
is not the problem chronic unresolved stress is the problem this is the problem of the brain not
knowing how to sort and manage all the stimulation and all the triggers and all the threats that come
at it and when we feel too many things coming at us our brain interprets that as if we're being
attacked as if we're in danger if if you've got so many things that feel urgent but you can't
do them all your brain can go into shutdown mode so what do we do with this right no one no one has
the time to do everything they want or need to do so so how do i manage this i personally take
the time to intentionally sort out and choose what i'm going to work on what are my priorities
and and what i can let go of and this i really believe can help clear up that chronic unresolved
stress so for me i don't know whether it's anxiety or whether it's add but i am i constantly
feel like my brain is overflowing with ideas and tasks and to-do lists and then on top of
that there's the screaming children so the way that i i manage this is i'm constantly throughout
the day writing down my to-do lists so i'll write down a list of everything on my mind and then
i'll just choose one or two things clarify what is most important what are my priorities
and then i just get to work on a couple of them and that helps me manage my stress and anxiety so
for some people clarifying looks like journaling and this can really help with anxiety because it
helps your brain sort through the confusing mess and and to get clarity and then to get going
again um another thing you can do like i do is these priority or to-do lists but then just make
sure to highlight only the few that you're going to work on or journal the journaling skill of
a brain dump or journaling about your locus of control each of these things can help you you know
clarify and manage your stress throughout the day now i'm going to jump ahead here to sleep you
know you think going to sleep would be my last daily routine but sleep is really
important so to be able to sort through all these tasks you really need the executive
functioning part of your brain to be working and for that part of your brain to
work well you need to get enough sleep so when your mind is rested it can
better manage all that excess stimulation and it can resolve anxiety when it comes up but i
know it can be hard to sleep when you're anxious i have a hard time sleeping sometimes so if
you're not getting enough sleep or you're having a hard time sleeping i would say just choose
one small step you can take to sleep better now in order to manage anxiety another skill
that i've had to learn was to get a little bit better at saying no so resolving anxiety is about
regaining self-control so if you want to resolve anxiety you may have to say no to the occasional
party so that you get enough sleep so that you don't need coffee in the morning so that you're
not stressed out and anxious throughout the day choosing a sustainable path instead of a frantic
one requires like a careful sorting of priorities in your life so when we consciously choose
to not overload our brain it can handle these tasks with more composure so this is something
i have to work on all the time is just saying no to a lot of things that i want to do but
i know are not going to be helpful for me now next one i want to talk about is getting time
in nature i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this but there is a bunch of research that nature
is really good for anxiety and i personally love it so i'm going to encourage you to try to get
some nature into your day-to-day life i am blessed to live in an area where i can get out in nature
every day but you can get a dose of nature even if you're trapped in the city so go for a walk look
at the sky water a plant keep a fish visit a park or even just watching a documentary or looking
at pictures of nature can be really soothing for your brain so i'm gonna encourage you to make
nature a part of your daily routine the last part of my daily habits that i use to reduce stress and
anxiety is i make sure that my day is not too full i make sure that i turn off at some point during
the day so take time to wind down in the evening so that you have time to get ready to go
to sleep and and get a good night's rest and and wake up ready to take care of yourself so
for me my wind down routine looks like turning off my phone taking a hot bath reading some random
book and even though i'm super busy with three little kids and a job and a business i make it a
priority to get a few minutes of peace most nights so comment below what are you going to do for
your wind down routine what helps you manage your day-to-day stress levels when you take the time to
resolve problems and to work with your brilliant ancient brain you really can learn to reduce
anxiety and to get a lot of things done okay that's it i hope you find this helpful
thank you for watching and take care
#Daily #Habits #Reduce #Stress #Anxiety
source
Improve your mental health with the free course, https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/grounding-skills-for-anxiety-stress-and-ptsd
This helped me a lot.
A very well done video.
This was excellent content.
This video was well worth the watch.
Keep me in prayer that I change my environment soon
Such a great video to watch.
Clear and easy to follow.
Nicely detailed without being too long.
Exactly what I was looking for.
Really appreciate this upload.
This is very helpful information for everyone.
This is very helpful information for everyone.
This was worth watching.
One of the clearest explanations I’ve seen.
What and how can both my son and I who has ADHD do something together on a daily basis where we can bond and heal?
This was very informative.
Really well presented.
The quality of this video is excellent.
Living with Bipolar 2 I’m always stressed. I starting getting gray hair and a gray beard at 21
Helps relieve stress from work
Listen navkar Mantra whenever you are free as it boost memory nd reduce stress…❤it also gives peace nd happiness…🎉❤
The heart finds peace when rhythms slow, like gentle streams that softly flow, with every breath and grounded stride, we calm the storm we hold inside—let worries pass like clouds above, and plant each habit wrapped in love, for in the soil and sunlit air, we find the strength to truly care #MindBodyBalance #DailyHabits #AnxietyRelief #NatureHeals #MentalWellness #StressRelief #LiveCloserToNature
Now that you've mentioned it, I remember vividly that feeling of running out of fear from something that isn't there. That' s a great description.
"If anyone’s looking for something straightforward to deal with stress, Streffie was a nice find."
Pleased stop adding music to your excellent videos. Some of them I have to turn off because of the music distraction.
Next life goal: reading "The Little House on the Prairie"😂❤
❤ eating breakfast outside most days even on dark, frosty mornings, walk or cycle daily, play sax with friends. These are my saviours. ❤
Thank you for what you are doing. Thank you for this video. Thank you for helping me understand the differences between shame, guilt and regret.
Thank you
I always be more anxious when I don't exercise which I didn't a few years ago. I think I need to turn on my parasympathetic response by completing tasks and sort out my priorities. Setting so many big goals are keeping me from starting. P.s. the background looks great. Thanks for the tips!
Ahh. 2020. When we could stay home, play in the garden…
These seems so useful to me:
Don't check social media first thing in the morning
Write ideas and tasks that come to my mind throughout the day
Check in with my self and try to be present in the moment
Workout
Get something physical done
Thanks alot
A precedence of daily prayer in the morning sets the tone for the day.
Can you imagine that no matter what happens, you have that strong unseen hand carrying you? I bask in the knowledge that vision.
Thank you! You really helped me! I'll be back to your channel !
If you struggle with stress, OCD, or neurological disorders, try Planet Ayurveda's NeuroGenie Capsules! Brahmi and Ashwagandha work wonders. My anxiety is under control now. Highly recommended.
Do some exercise everyday, that would help
"I feel much calmer and more relaxed since I started using Planet Ayurveda Stress Support capsule. It really helps manage my stress levels."
Is hard tbh to meditate especially if your stressed or having anxiety
Such clear and easy-to-follow advice, I really appreciate it!
The Neurogenie Capsules and Vikramprash from Planet Ayurveda are excellent products for improving focus and reducing anxiety naturally.
This advice is great, take a bath, a walk, gardening, but for me it doesn't solve the root of my problem, as I live in a troublesome area and the problems are ongoing. I know the only real solution is to move out, not to learn to cope by doing these things. It seems pointless to prolong the suffering.
I'm sure Emma you've met or talked to Mr Jordan Peterson,,,you both are special people!!!